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Monday, May 14, 2012

The Official Winner of the IFFP

The results for the official Independent Foreign Fiction Prize is in, so a hearty congratulations to Blooms of Darkness, written by Aharon Appelfeld & translated by Jeffrey M. Green. The judges said of this book “Jeffrey M Green's incantatory translation from the Hebrew does ample justice to a novel that meditates on the imagination, memory and language itself”.

Although it didn’t feature in the shadow jury’s short list, Mark from Eleutherophobia, said that the Writer “has crafted a nice, and somehow soul-enriching novel.” and our chairman, Stu from Winstonsdad said that “Aharon has shown why he considered one of the foremost Hebrew writers”. So although this wasn’t my personal favourite, or the choice of the shadow jury(Rob, Mark, Lisa,Tony, Stu, Simon and myself)), Congratulations to Aharon Appelfeld & Jeffrey M. Green from all the members of the shadow jury & hope you enjoy yourself at the official celebrations this evening.

Here are the shadow jury posts on this the official IFFP 2012 winner.Mark, Simon, Stu, Tony

Also once again I want to thank all my fellow Judges for making this such a successful first year for the Shadow IFFP & an additional thanks to Stu for the original invite & if he does it again - I'm in :-)

10 comments:

Thank you for highlighting the winner, and for giving me(us) your personal favorite (From The Mouth of The Whale). Looking forward to getting these two novels, but I'll look for my nook first rather than my local library. Which, as you know, is notorious for not having quality fiction. I love that you, and the others, read translated fiction so passionately. I long to read more of it with you.

Hi Bellezza, I read From the mouth of the whale on my Kindle, so I know that's in an E-book format, as to the winning book, I'm guessing it probably is nowadays. Thanks for your comments & hope you enjoy them, with one proviso check the posts on the winner before you purchase as subject matter could be seen as controversial.

Controversial may have been too strong a word, but there is a relationship between an 11 year old boy & a middle age woman that if the genders were swapped may have caused a louder cry. I've not yet read the book but a couple of the others who have, mentioned it in their posts.

Okay; a little reverse Lolita so to speak. I can handle that, especially if it won the IFFP. To me, that means it's still a literary work and not just written for sensationalism (such as The Fifty Shades of Grey I scorned in a former post).